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Topic: Good books on Buddha and Buddhism? (Read 5976 times)

Can anyone recommend any good books on Buddhism? I'm mostly interested in books on the life of Buddha, but any good books on Buddhism will do. Anything inspirational is also good. There are just so many books on the subject out there that I don't always know what is credible and what is not. Thanks

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Ingram, Daniel MPointing Out the Great Way by Brown, Daniel PAnything by Jack Kornfield, Kenneth Folk, Dzogchen Ponlop, Lama Surya Das, Chogyam Ngakpa, Yongdzin Lopon Tenzi Namdak, John Myrdhin Reynolds and Chogyal Namkhai Norbu just to name a few.

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Mindís nature is and always has been buddha. It has neither birth nor cessation, like space.

I recently listened to the audiobook, "what makes you not a Buddhist" it was a pretty good book that basically just hammered in the importance of the four Dharma Seals and that people who believe in the individual soul and going to heaven after death are not Buddhists.

For the most part if you just want to memorize things like the eight-fold path and the four noble truths etc then I'd just use wikipedia. The Dharmapada is a classic text it's not really that amazing or anything but it's about as old and authentic a buddhist text as you will get, though new teachers might give you something a little bit easier for the modern reader.

If you want to go down the Mahayana path there is of course the lotus sutra and the heart sutra which are important.